Dear Clarence Thomas,
I heard that you are going to be on "60 Minutes" this Sunday. I thought I'd write you the letter I've always wanted to write. Oh, I wrote once before, in favor of your confirmation, during the Senate Hearing, but I didn’t really expect that note to be read—it was a sort of “snow-flake” letter, meant to pile up with others like it into a kind of giant snowdrift to show you that people cared about you.
But, I have some things now to say to you and to thank you for.
I watched all the confirmation hearings. Using my own eyes and ears, I grew to know that America is extremely lucky to have you on the Supreme Court. I also found you to be an extraordinarily decent man. Believe this: The Senate knew you were telling the truth. If the Democrats had believed Anita Hill, there would have been weeks of extended hearings—they had the power, and they always use it on their enemies. But they decided not to go any further.
I was afraid when Anita Hill started testifying, because I had come to admire you and I wanted you on the Court, but it became absolutely clear to me that she was telling a carefully crafted lie, set to achieve maximum damage. Her story was actually trivial and stupid, but its “details” and the ambiance of the hearing were meant to inflame. Everything I saw and heard that weekend gave me more evidence that she had suggested something before the hearings that they thought would get you to withdraw yourself from the nomination, and then, when you didn’t withdraw, she had been forced to testify and embellish her original lie. I was actually yelling at the TV and shaking with anger, because I couldn’t believe how unspeakably evil it all was. The Democrats simply cannot tolerate a talented, brilliant minority who is Conservative. They need victims, not heroes. But they lost the fight, and you and I and America won.
So, first, thank you for being so strong and defiant. If you had been a lesser man, the powers of darkness would have won, and they’ve been winning far too many fights in this world. You were a real hero fighting against real evil, and there are moments that I will remember for the rest of my life. Moments like the “ordinary” people who put on their Seven-League Boots and marched on Washington to speak the truth and honor you. Like an exhausted Senator Danforth shepherding that panel of women, so very late at night, all of them weary and angry, facing their inquisitors with their open love for you and what you meant to their lives. Like watching men of the caliber of Alan Simpson and Orrin Hatch and others fight for you, each clearly ashamed of the injustice that was being done to you. Like your wonderful wife, sitting behind you with a fierce pride in you, damning the panel with her eyes, showing by her courage and strength the same spirit that we admire so in legends of heroes and heroines.
I have often wondered how I would have felt had I been privy to the actual moments of history depicted in Shakespeare or in Victor Hugo or in the biographies by Carlyle—how it would have been to have seen great men and women on the stage of history, fighting against the tyrannies of the weak-souled and evil-minded. I no longer need to wonder about it, for I have seen it now, actually experienced it at the moment of its existence. I have felt the atmosphere grow still around me as I became aware of the strange grandeur of the scene. I will never forget the power of the moment, of you and your lady, of the self-selected champions of your cause fighting for you, of the real evil and deliberate cruelty of your enemies as they ranged against you, afraid to fight you in the realm of ideas and beliefs, choosing instead to try to drag you into the haunted morass which is their natural habitat.
What happened to you gave me the privilege of seeing real love and true loyalty, deep integrity and great personal valor. The fight for values and authenticity is not a play of words in a philosophy book, or an ironic and sophistical debate between academics of an afternoon. The fight is very real, and real human beings bear the scars of the battle. Most of the time, this fight is hidden, camouflaged by the deceptive normalcy of day-to-day existence. It is only in the rare moments of absolute clarity that come when the issues are stark and clear, and the enemy is powerful and savage, that we recognize the peril, that we come to see the beast itself, slouching toward the darkness that it yearns for, that it knows as its true home, that it would bring to all of us if we cease to have among us giants like you, like those who stood with you.
The nightmare that you lived was an awakening call to those of us lucky enough to have seen what was really happening. I am grateful to you for this, and for the way you have continued to be an extraordinary individual, delighting your admirers and vexing your enemies.
I am grateful to you for the depth of your thought, too. Like during the hearing, when you were asked about your speech before an “ultra-conservative” audience, where you spoke of Natural Law. They were trying to pin you down about your views on abortion. Your answer was remarkable—yet the Democrats were so interested in their litmus-test that the marvel about what you said completely eluded them. I heard it, and focused on it in excitement.
This is my interpretation of your brief answer. You said that you had chosen to praise the use of the arguments of natural law in the pro-life presentation given by the man honored by the group before whom you were speaking. That by so doing, you hoped to induce your audience to carry the strength of Natural Law as a philosophical basis into the problem of bringing wisdom to the race problems we Americans have as a people. That they must include such philosophical threads into the fabric of conservative policy design, that they must reach out to include everyone in the changes that are needed in society. That this must also include the concept that once you have taken an evil away, you have not done the job. In solving a problem, you must also deal with the problem that the evil was meant to deal with in the first place. Or, to put it simply, when you have gotten rid of a bad solution, you haven’t finished the job until you have produced a good solution. A little explosion went off in my mind when I heard your answer and realized what it was that you seemed to mean. Okay, Minta, I said to myself, it is not enough to recognize evil and to fight it successfully. You also have to find a good to put in its place, and work toward it.
This realization of the necessary extra step may be obvious to you, but I think most of the world thinks that once you’ve killed the dragon, you’ve won the keys to the kingdom. I wish the panel had listened to your answer, and asked you to amplify on it—but the Democrat’s goal was to destroy you in any way possible, and listening to you saying important things was not in their game plan. I love you, Clarence Thomas. You have wisdom, courage, brilliance, and a generous heart. You have deliberately put yourself in the arena. And you say and write things that enlarge the human spirit and enhance our understanding. Just seeing your name in print makes me feel better about things. So I have to thank you for that, too.
I’ve heard you give a few speeches on C-SPAN, and you make clear the part your grandfather played in your life. I think of him at times, because I’m grateful to him for helping give America a superb Supreme Court Justice, and also I’m grateful to him for having been so strong as a man. Ever since you first spoke of him at the hearing, I have thought of him as one of my heroes.
I can never forget the story you told at the hearing of how your grandfather had to steel himself to face the treatment he’d get whenever he went for the official permission necessary for the work he did. It shows simultaneously the obscenity of racism and the glory of the human spirit. Your grandfather deliberately put himself into positions where he had to deal with the kind of dragons no one should have to face. He did this because of what he was inside, because he voluntarily chose the burdens of manhood, and, by God, no small-minded, stunted men were going to make him drop the precious load he carried—his life and his family. Good men have chosen the quieter routes around the periphery of the stadium; it took both goodness and deep strength of character for your grandfather to deliberately enter the arena, to put himself into the ring over and over again.
Both you and your grandfather have influenced—for the better—people you will never know. There are countless people who celebrate your life, people who will never be in a position to let you know how much your words and your writings and your careful and wise decisions have meant to them. I know I won’t always agree with you—there are issues where “reasonable people can disagree”—but I thank God you are where you are. I love America, you see. And you are really, really good for America. God bless you, my friend.
P.S. I know it’s presumptuous of me, but sometimes I think of how it would be to take a time machine back and pick up your grandfather and bring him to the present, to the Supreme Court. We would be invisible, standing back in the shadows of the room, and we would watch you Justices come in, and your grandfather would be amazed and shaken and delighted. And in the way that men have when they are deeply moved, he would probably say something a little dry and ironical and maybe he’d pretend to be astonished that his Clarence had managed to get himself on the proper side of the bench, and that there’d been times when the young collegiate Clarence had veered a little and had had to be straightened out, and, Well I’ll be! And to be on the Supreme Court of the land, the place of last resort and of first promise! John Marshall and Oliver Wendell Holmes and Brandeis and other names to conjure with—and now Justice Clarence Thomas, added to the mix. Maybe he’d half laugh about it, the way men do— but his voice would be a little unsteady, and his jaw would twist a bit, and his soul would stand there naked in his eyes.
And then maybe he’d beam, and shake his head in wonder, and get tears in his eyes and pretend that they weren’t there. And maybe he’d be suddenly so overcome with the reality of it all that he would stand there silently, literally speechless, aware of the majesty of the room and of the moment. The details of his life could not be so suddenly merged with the magic of his grandson sitting in that place, in that position. And maybe he’d think for a while, and remember the moments in his life when he’d been hard-pressed to keep going, when he’d had to force himself to face the slights and petty ugliness of the small-minded and the weak-souled, moments when the world itself had turned inward on him, threatening to choke him in its stranglehold. And then he’d look across at you, and he’d know then, he’d know deep in his soul, that there would always be those in the world who were lost and frightened, who were close to breaking, who had seen their lives made into a nightmare—and who would come to look to his grandson for justice. And he’d know that they’d find justice there. There would be no slights or ugliness for them—they would come before a man who carries the finest qualities of Mankind and of America in his heart. And America would grow and become even more of a reality in the world.
There is no time machine, of course. But it pleases me to know that your grandfather is with you anyway. He lives in your mind, and his spirit sings in your veins.
It’s a vision that brings me great joy.
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Rosemary's Thoughts, DeMediacratic Nation, Big Dog's Weblog, Right Truth, Webloggin, Leaning Straight Up, Conservative Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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